The real meaning of theatre

Just came back from the final reading The Real Meaning of Things at the Rough Writers New Play Festival. We had about 40 people at the first reading a week ago and nearly a full house of around 100 tonight, and the response to the festival as a whole and my play in pa

The after-reading talkbacks provided an interesting contrast. Last week, they were mostly question for me and the other playwrights: what inspired you to your this play? How much research did you do?

Tonight the tables were reversed as the audience members told us what they thought. And there was one comment in particular that grabbed my attention.

My play takes place during Georgia O'Keeffe's first trip to New Mexico. She has been frustrated in New York, and as she explores this wild new land, she discovers something that she has long been searching for:

EARL

I mean it. Most of the women I know, they'd have been screaming for help, afraid the coyote would get them. 

GEORGIA

I'm not afraid. I'm like that coyote. I belong here too. 

EARL

In the desert? 

GEORGIA

In the desert. In the mountains. The whole of New Mexico, I guess. It's such a quiet, lonely place. It makes me feel—oh, I don't know. 

EARL

Peaceful? 

GEORGIA

Oh, God. Not that. 

EARL

Then what? 

GEORGIA

Hungry.

There's no stage direction before that final word to tell the actress to pause, but she did--exactly as I had hoped.

The comment I wanted to mention was in reference to that line. The commenter said that he had expected the next word to be "Alive", but when Georgia said "Hungry"instead, it somehow seemed better. It somehow seemed right. Also, exactly as I had hoped.

As a playwright, you're at the mercy of your actors. This is both good and bad. Actors can often misinterpret your intent. But when they get it right, it's a powerful thing.

And sometimes, they uncover things you didn't even know were there.

Of course, the best part of any reading is sharing the experience with your friends. I had a lot of friends at tonight's reading--including a good-sized contingent from my playwriting group--and I'm grateful for their support. I especially enjoyed the chats we had afterwards, about theatre, about life, about everything and nothing.

I want to send out a big thank you to Nathan Halvorson, director of the festival, and the entire crew at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. It was a great festival, and I can't wait to submit next time around.

Rough writing

It's always nice to get mentioned in the press, even if that mention is a brief one. Which is why I'm happy to report that my short play, The Real Meaning of Things, got a shout-out in this month's issue of American Theatre magazine, the Bible of the American theatre community.

The article covers the Rough Writers New Play Festival at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and focuses on Jade O'Keeffe, a Toronto-based playwright whose full-length play Two Nine One Letters is one of the centerpieces of the festival. O'Keeffe based her play on the extensive series of letters between Georgia O'Keeffe and her lover-turned-husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. And yes, in case you're wondering, Jade is a relative of the artist, though a distant one.

My play was not nearly as well-researched, inspired as it was by a single sentence in Georgia O'Keeffe's Wikipedia entry. But it was a really good sentence.

I attended the first reading of my play last weekend, and the FAC did a fantastic job with it. They cast two of my favorite local actors: Mike Miller as a hard-bitten rancher and Amy Brooks as a humorously prickly Georgia O'Keeffe, and their performances precisely captured the awkwardness I was going for.

If you're in the area, I encourage you to stop in this Saturday at 8pm for the final reading of this and three other plays by local playwrights.

Hometown hit

I was both honored and thrilled to learn that my newest 10-minute play The Real Meaning of Things was selected for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center's Rough Writers New Play Festival. As such, it'll get two staged readings along with the other seven winners.

This hit is especially meaningful to me, not just because the play is one of my few dramas, not just because the play is my first one based on real people. No, the hit is especially meaningful because the FAC has played such a big part in the life of myself and my family.

Over the years, I've been to dozens of performances there. It was the place where I first introduced my daughters to the joys of theatre (Annie and Brigadoon were big hits with them). Even more importantly, it was where my younger daughter often appeared on stage, twice as part of the theatre company's excellent Youth Rep summer camp, and twice in their mainstage productions (The Music Man and Gypsy). So being selected for this reading feels a lot like coming home.

In tandem with the FAC's upcoming Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit, the theme of this year's Rough Writers festival was the life and works of that quintessentially American artist. For my play, I decided to focus on O'Keeffe's time in New Mexico. As I explain in my blurb for the festival:

Through my research, I was fascinated to discover that Georgia O'Keeffe had learned to drive at the age of 41, mostly she could explore the New Mexico desert by herself. According to reports she was a fearless driver, though not a great one. That instantly sparked an image in my mind and I wondered what would have happened if her car had broken down.

If you'd like to attend the reading, it'll be held at 7:30 PM on the first two Saturdays of June in the FAC's upstairs music room. I'm excited to be sharing the stage with three other local writers--Sue Bachmann, Jess Weaver and Grant Swenson--all of whom happen to be members of my playwriting group.

Seriously, if you're a playwright and you haven't joined a playwriting group yet, you need to.